Blood

by Emily Thompson

  The two men Aazzi had been speaking with offered light smiles and greetings to the others.

  “Twist!” Aazzi gasped, looking to him in wonder. “You came as well? But I’m in a very dangerous position here.”

  “That’s why we had to come,” Twist said, smiling to Aazzi. “You’ve done so much for Myra and me that we could never repay you. If I can be of any help to you now, then I’m at your service.”

  “Yes, of course,” Myra added to her. “We’d both like to help.”

  Aazzi’s smile warmed as they spoke, taking on a shade of pride as well. “Thank you both,” Aazzi said. “And Jonas…” she said, looking to him now. “Thank you for coming. Considering how rarely you are with us, your loyalty on this day means a great deal to me.”

  “Speaking of which,” Jonas said, “where is everyone? Why are we in a monastery?”

  “They’re all alive,” Aazzi said gently to him. “Howell and Arabel were hurt, but they will recover. They and Zayle are sleeping now.”

  Jonas nodded, taking in the news calmly. Twist felt his anxiety ease but not disappear.

  “These two men have also come to help,” Aazzi said, gesturing to the two who stood quietly behind her. “They are Philippe’s old friends, and they just arrived from France a few hours ago.”

  One of the two men said something to Aazzi in French. She responded to him with a smile and a nod, speaking quickly in the same language. The other man said something that sounded comforting as he reached out to pat her shoulder. Aazzi accepted his touch with a smile before the two of them left the room.

  “They are going to bring us some refreshments,” Aazzi said. “This is likely to be a long night for us,” she added with a sigh. “But I’m so grateful to all of you.”

  “Don’t forget us,” Luca said, stepping around Jonas along with his father.

  “Luca! Harman! Oh, thank heaven you’ve come,” Aazzi gasped, stepping closer to them. They each gave her a cool, polite smile, but neither of them moved to within arm’s reach. “Tell me, did you bring it?” she asked anxiously.

  Luca glanced at Skye. Skye held up the vial of glowing red liquid with a tight smile. Aazzi appeared instantly relieved.

  “That is the last known vial still left in the world, now,” Harman said. “But saving a good friend like Philippe is well worth the cost. And it must be fate that you need it so quickly, even if we nearly lost it to a magpie along the way,” he added glancing toward Skye.

  “Seriously, if you keep calling me that, I’m gonna pop you in the nose,” Skye muttered, glaring at Harman.

  “Who is this?” Aazzi asked curiously, looking to her.

  “Skye Blue,” Jonas answered. “She and Twist rescued me from outer space, when you lot forgot all about me.”

  “Oh yes!” Aazzi said, stepping up to Skye and offering her a handshake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Arabel told me about the valiant Rook lady who risked her life to free our Jonas from dragons.”

  Twist clenched his jaw and snapped his eyes closed against the shiver that followed the word “dragon,” while Skye accepted the handshake politely. Myra gave Twist an encouraging tone and rubbed his back.

  “Are you all right?” Aazzi asked him softly.

  Twist nodded, taking another long breath.

  “Twist gets a shudder whenever anyone mentions those creatures by name,” Jonas explained. “We think it might be because one of them exploded right on top of him.”

  Aazzi’s face washed over with alarm. “How did the beast explode?”

  “It was going to eat me,” Twist responded, slightly unnerved by her agitation. “I had a bomb in my hand and threw it down the beast’s throat. It exploded, but it seems that the creature isn’t exactly dead.”

  The gypsies stared at Twist open mouthed. Twist guessed their surprise was due to the simple fact that they had never been told the tale.

  “You slew the beast?” Aazzi gasped in astonishment. She looked to Jonas with dread. “And he already can’t bear the word?”

  “When did this happen?” Luca asked.

  “About two weeks ago,” Jonas said, frowning. “Why?”

  “Two weeks?” Harman asked, his face incredulous.

  “All right, what’s going on?” Jonas asked, putting up his hands.

  “His Sight!” Aazzi said suddenly. “Of course. It’s a touch-related Sight. The creature must be using it.” She looked at Twist, clearly worried now. “Have you had any nightmares about the beast coming to attack you?”

  Everyone looked to Twist as shock rippled through his heart.

  “The last two nights,” he said, nodding. “But, Aazzi, how did you know?”

  “Oh, there is so much to explain…” Aazzi said, a hand raised to her brow. “I’m very sorry to hear about this, Twist. It should be a little while longer before the creature can truly begin to torment you. For the moment, you must be careful of mirrors. And if you ever see him or hear him speak, you must remind yourself that it’s only an illusion. The ghost of his spirit can’t physically harm you or anyone else. It’s only a ghost.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Twist asked her, bewildered.

  “The substance in that vial is the same as what has soaked into your skin,” she said gravely. “When the creature’s body is destroyed, its spirit will try to cling to the nearest living thing. But there are ways to remove it and use it for magic,” she added, gesturing to the vial Skye had put away.

  Twist stared back at her dumbly. All of the idle comments that he had heard others say about dragon’s blood and Kazan’s revenge now fell neatly into his understanding. Something had clearly changed in Twist from the moment that Kazan had exploded.

  “And what does all of this have to do with saving Phil?” Jonas asked. “What’s happened to him?”

  “There is much to explain,” Aazzi said wearily. “For the moment, you need to know that Philippe has been taken by a clan of vampires. My kind can’t bear sunlight or fire. Dragons—”

  Twist hissed, snapping his eyes shut as he shuddered.

  “I’m sorry,” Aazzi said to him quickly. “The creature you killed,” she amended, “they are made of fire. They are born in volcanoes and stars, and they live in fire and heat. We are natural enemies. No vampire can stand the touch of a…of them.

  “That’s why I asked for the blood from Harman and his family,” she continued. “Gypsy magic is one of the last surviving kinds that uses the energy of a slain…monster. Philippe studied it long ago, and I learned of it from him. Just one drop of the ‘blood’ in a human being will protect them from vampires for a day or so. But a slayer, covered in the blood of the monster…” She looked to Twist now. “You are already protected. No vampire could stand to touch you long enough to kill you.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know,” Myra said brightly.

  Twist glanced at Jonas but didn’t sense that this news gave him any courage about the events he’d seen in his vision.

  “But,” Aazzi said hesitantly, “letting that much blood linger on you isn’t healthy. The ghost will try to drive you mad.”

  “I didn’t even want to kill the bloody thing!” Twist grumbled.

  Myra took Twist’s hand; her emotions were edged with dread. “How do we get it off of him?”

  “Gypsies remember how,” Aazzi said, turning to Harman. “Doesn’t your mother know the spells?”

  “Yes, Mama does,” Harman said, nodding. “I’m sure of it.”

  Relief broke through Myra’s emotions, warming Twist’s Sight along with her own heart. “Then we’ll take care of it as soon as we can,” she assured him. “But first, we need to rescue Philippe.”

  “Yes…” Aazzi said, her face filling with worry again. “Please, everyone, sit down. There is no use in leaving at this hour, and I have a long story to tell you before we can go anywhere.”

  When the two Frenchmen returned to the waiting room with some simple fare—hard cheeses with plain biscuits, slices of fruit, and a
pair of coffeepots—everyone was introduced once again. But in the ensuing conversations about how everyone knew Philippe and Aazzi, Twist found he’d forgotten the Frenchmen’s names. Rather than admit his lapse in attention, Twist decided to just give them names himself, to help him to tell them apart.

  He silently named the tall one with the long, tied-back, blond hair Rosencrantz, and the shorter one with the short black hair Guildenstern. Even if the original Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were Danish instead of French, the pair of them seemed somehow similar to Hamlet’s old friends, in Twist’s mind. Once the topic of what was to be done about Philippe returned to the conversation, Aazzi took it upon herself to explain.

  “I think that you all need to know,” she began, “that the vampires who attacked us here are the remains of my own family.”

  A murmur of shock wandered through the others, while the Frenchmen listened with solemn nods.

  “You may need to understand their motives, should things go badly for us,” she explained. “I will tell you what truly happened in my past so that there will be no confusion. These creatures are masters of manipulation, after all.”

  She took a deep breath, clearly finding it difficult to begin. Seated to her right, Guildenstern laid a hand on her shoulder and offered a supportive smile. Aazzi smiled back and straightened her posture a bit as she looked over the others.

  “My village was attacked by a swarm of vampires when I was just a girl,” she began. “My younger brother and I were the only ones to escape, small as we were at the time. We fled to the north, where I struggled to create some sort of life for us. As the years went by, rumors of vampire attacks grew in number, all over Africa. Whole villages were taken time and again, with greater frequency than anyone had ever seen. It wasn’t long before the survivors who escaped began to be hunted down and turned into vampires themselves.

  “Families were trying to stay together, you see. If enough of one family was turned, they usually wanted to turn the others as well, so that they could continue to live together. Since there were suddenly so many vampires in one place, they gained a huge amount of power, even in the human world. They pooled resources and bought land, factories, and thousands of slaves. Everyone knew that only some of the slaves were used as workers. In all of this, I was desperate to keep my brother and I safe. I changed our names—Aazzi wasn’t the name I was given at birth—and I kept us moving north until we ended up in Algeria, working menial housekeeping jobs and the like where we found them.

  “I was working as a maid in a hotel when I met a foolish but charming young man,” Aazzi said, her grim expression warming. “He was born wealthy in Paris and was only just barely out of medical school when I met him. He had these wild theories about vampirism and was determined to create a name for himself in the medical community by finding a cure for it, as if it were simply a disease. Coming to Africa in search of a nest full of vampires to experiment on, he offered a reward to anyone who could lead him to one.

  “Of course I knew better, but the money was too great a temptation; my brother and I had been thrown into poverty when our village was massacred. When Philippe heard my story, he insisted that I tell him how to find where my village had been. There weren’t any roads that led there, at least not anything a European city boy could follow. He realized quickly that I would have to lead him there myself.

  “Naturally, I wanted to refuse, but Badu—my younger brother—had been asking and asking if we would ever go home. He missed our country terribly. I thought,” she said, her voice growing tighter now, “that we would be safe if we went there in a large group. Philippe wanted to bring other scientists with us and soldiers to protect us. He would pay me for my help. And…” she sighed, “he was ever so charming.”

  Aazzi took a deep breath before she went on. “In the end, I agreed. We left for Ghana with Philippe, and Badu came along with us. When we got there, I was stunned. There was nothing left where my village had been, but the whole area had been overrun with vampires. There were thousands of them. They had bought an old Portuguese castle on the coast as well as most of the surrounding town. But they were so well fed by the slaves they collected that the remaining human townspeople had practically gotten used to living near them. They didn’t attack villages or towns anymore at all. They bought what they wanted and paid the city well.

  “But then,” she said, with a soft sigh, “the very first night we arrived in their city, Badu insisted on going out to look at all of the opulent wonder of the place. It was a lot like this city is now, full of gaslights at night and all-night theaters and entertainment to cater to the vampires. I refused to let him out at all and tried to keep him with us, surrounded by the soldiers. But he slipped away in the middle of the night. He returned a few hours later, with my mother beside him. She still looked exactly as she had on the night our village had been attacked—and so many years had passed that she looked younger than I did then. Except now, her eyes were silver.”

  Twist felt his chest tighten as he listened to Aazzi. Beside him, Myra looked nearly ready to cry. He took her hand quietly, sharing in the echo of her shock as well.

  “The monster that looked like my mother said she’d missed us both,” Aazzi said with a hollow voice. “She wanted us to join the clan. Badu…”

  She paused, taking a long breath. Guildenstern reached out to take her hand, his face awash with compassion. Aazzi gave him a grateful smile and regained her composure.

  “She had already turned Badu. He told me that he had taken her offer, as if it were a gift. He said that if I joined them too, we would never die. and we’d be together forever.”

  Aazzi let out another sigh.

  “When I refused, horrified, they forced their gift on me,” she said, her voice growing hard. “I lost my head for a long while, but once I realized what had happened, I was furious and disgusted. Some of my family’s friends had attacked the Frenchmen, once Badu told them that they had planned to experiment on vampires. Many of the soldiers and scientists had been killed, and many more had fled, but Philippe and a few others were still fighting to hold off the attack.

  “I fought for them, tearing at the vampires with all of my hate and dismay. My new strength helped me greatly, but I think it was my horror and rage that truly won the battle. When the vampires fell back to regroup, Philippe made the last few human survivors take me along when they fled. We finally escaped by slipping undetected onto a steamship that was just heading out to sea.”

  Aazzi took a moment to collect her thoughts. When she spoke again, her voice was clear.

  “I won’t bore you with the details of what happened after that,” she said with a moment of mirth. “Suffice it to say, Philippe was beside himself with remorse and vowed to cure me if it was the last thing he ever did. We’ve been together ever since, and he’s actually made some strides in his research. I now only need to drink a small amount of blood to stay healthy, far less than I normally would. I swear I’ve begun to age slightly as well,” she added with a smile, looking at her own hands.

  “But,” she went on, “my family, meanwhile, had declared war on him. They still wanted me to join them, even after I fought them. They are furious with me for even wanting to be cured, and I’m sure they blame Philippe for taking me away from them. They still can’t appreciate my feelings at all. I’ve stayed well away from West Africa ever since that night, and Philippe and I joined the Vimana partly to stay on the move.

  “Last week, the boiler broke down while we were flying to South Africa. We had no choice but to land for repairs. We came here, hoping we could keep from being noticed if we were quick. It had been so long, I thought that they might have stopped looking for me at all. I had no idea that my family had tracked Philippe and I to the Vimana.

  “The moment we landed, a swarm of vampires attacked us. We tried to fight them off and escape, but there were just too many. They left Howell and Arabel for dead and took Philippe prisoner. I was knocked out at some point and fell into the
sea. Once I came to on the beach, I managed to save Howell and Arabel, thanks to things I’d learned from Philippe, and I found Zayle after he’d been thrown overboard as well. But they must have known that I would never allow myself to be taken. They took Philippe to draw me to them, I’m sure.

  “And so,” she said, her tone now one of finality, “I know that they are keeping him alive. They won’t turn him, either. They know that I would count him as dead if they did. They want me to come, willingly, so that they can convince me to stay. I don’t know what they plan to do to achieve this goal, but I know that it will never work. I just have to get him back.

  “I realize that this is completely my problem, alone,” she said, looking around at each of them. “I have no illusions, and I don’t want any of you to have any either. There could be hundreds of monsters when we get there, and none of them will hesitate in the slightest to kill or turn any one of you. But I can’t save my husband alone. I have asked you all here because you are my most trusted friends, but I won’t think any less of any one of you if you decide not to go.”

  Everyone sat in silence for a long moment, each person lost in his or her own thoughts. Finally, with a glance to each other, the two Frenchmen rose to their feet.

  “Madam,” Rosencrantz said, in a strong French accent, “you will not go to those monsters alone. You were there for us when your family attacked, all those years ago, and we are here for you now.”

  Guildenstern nodded in agreement, with a proud smile on his face.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Aazzi said with a bittersweet smile.

  “Well, I’m not getting shown up by a Frenchman,” Jonas said, getting to his feet as well. “Besides, I have a feeling you’re going to need a good pair of eyes in all that darkness.”

  Aazzi smiled at him warmly.

  “I’ve already told you that I’m at your service,” Twist said to Aazzi. “Besides, I’m covered in something that won’t let me be killed by vampires,” he added pointedly to Jonas.

  Jonas looked back at him with dismal gray eyes. The buzz in Twist’s neck grew colder, but Jonas didn’t protest. Twist frowned, recognizing a shade of hopelessness in his friend’s spirit. He was distracted, however, when Skye stood as well.